Never Friend Anyone

On Facebook, I decided to never friend anyone. I will allow others to be my friend.

Never Use Facebook

I never take advantage of my Facebook account. If you’ve caught me online, I was probably just using Facebook as a promotional tool for my websites.

Accept All Friend Invites

“How are you?” asks person a.

“I’m good,” person b responds.

“How good are you?” person a sarcastically asks.

This really annoys me when someone tells me that I am wrong by saying “I am good”. It is correct to say “I am good,” because with this sentence there is an adjective for a subject complement (which is also a predicate adjective in this case). Next time someone asks you how you are, make sure to say that you’re good, and say it with confidence. If they tell you you’re wrong, explain to them how saying “I am good,” is a textbook example of a predicate adjective. According to Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers: 6th Edition, “Use adjectives, not adverbs, as subject complements”. I feel that justifies my point.

I promise this is my last grammar-related post for a while.

Facebook is the world’s largest social network of 2010. The massive amount of information that Facebook has about people isn’t the staggering part of my argument; it’s how Facebook can use this amount of information that mainly concerns me. Facebook knows who your best friends are based on your interactions. Side note: I know I am treating Facebook like it is a person-when I say Facebook, I am referring to their employees.

Facebook could sell all of the information they have about anyone who has registered, and it wouldn’t matter to them, for they’ve profited at the bottom line. This is what makes me think might be giving Facebook too much information. We already have the incredibly huge Google. We don’t want so many moguls on the Internet, as this problem makes it harder for people to start on the Internet. I’m personally worried for the time when rebellion against a large company on the Internet is impossible because that company runs the Internet. I see this is like Net Neutrality.

I’d also like to update those who have been reading that there will be more videos and more blog posts not necessarily regarding design or technology coming soon. I plan to make this happen after the new theme I’ve been testing is completed. The goal of this new theme is to make tplack.com my center of the web. (I won’t get rid of the design articles, they’ll just be in their own section of the site)

1. “Awkward Silence”

You really didn’t need to say anything at the silence; you’re just making it more awkward by making note (and making everyone aware) of the silence. Conversations have their time to begin and their time to end.

2. “Me and (Person X)…”

Firstly, this just kills me on my English nerd side. [Explanation: me is not a subject pronoun, and this sentence is using it as a subject pronoun-use I. Also, it is rude to put yourself first, though it would be correct to say I and Person X...] This kills me even more when everyone that I’m around doesn’t understand this simple rule.

3. “Just saying”

When someone says this to me, I feel like they don’t want to offend me but they want to tell me something that normally would offend me. I think people just need to know how to better approach the situation. Those who say “Just saying” should pull the person aside, talk quietly about what is on their mind, and do it in the most professional way possible.

4. “Nuff said”

This one is simple: If there was enough said, why did you need to say that?

5. “Just wondering”

If you’re asking a question, you’re clearly wondering. I don’t mind when it’s used when the question may be taken offensively, but it has become a common trend to end questions with this.

Other things that just anger me:

1. Asking a question involving direction and ending it with at.

2. Mispronouncing words like “ask” (“I assed you that question already”) or “idea” (“Great ideer”)

I think it’d be quite fun and interesting to look back at this post in ten years to see how our trends have changed. What do you hate? Leave it in a comment below.

Web Safety

There are many people complaining about the “Web Safety” of fonts. While I understand their concern, I don’t feel it’s 100% valid. Many unexperienced people limit themselves to Serif and Sans-Serif period. The solution to this problem is simply using this in your CSS:

#content {

font-family: 1st choice font, 2nd choice font, etc;

}

If the user doesn’t have the first choice, it skips to the second choice rather than displaying the default browser stylesheet (which most likely will display TNR). Personally, I opted to override my browser’s stylesheet and show Myriad Pro just because I hate TNR. Yes, I hate it with a passion.

Underused Techniques of Using Basic Fonts

For those still sticking with the basic fonts, I want to show some underused techniques. Because I wasn’t formally taught CSS, HTML, PHP, or Web Design, I didn’t know of these techniques and I’d love to see them used more.

“Small Font, Capital Letters” Technique

This is something I’ve seen used a little bit. As you see the metadata (author, category, etc), there is that technique being used. Here was used a small font and barely contrasting color. I’ve been using this for metadata for a while. This also works well with a nice, dotted border.

“Color Significance” Technique

Without changing the font size or family, significance of an element can be determined by the color of it. This is shown via contrast between background and font color.  This is used at Lafable to show importance. The idea of this is to make the user not consciously understand the importance.

“Hard to Find Borders”

When creating a new div container, it is important to use a “Hard to Find Border”. These help to establish a sense of boundary for elements and keep the layout feeling clean and structured. WordPress themselves use this. (Yes, that’s a picture of me making the post)

10.

This header is great. I dislike the background, but I think that the typography really brings the design to another level. I also find myself not generally liking sites with dark color schemes, but I really like this one.

9.

I love SmileyCat’s color scheme. Blue is “in” right now, and I really love seeing whites with darker shades of gray. With this type of color scheme, I would have probably presented it differently, but I like this a lot more than the way I would have presented it.

8.

Vector tuts did a great job with the header. I love their spotlight effect in the background where it says “Vector”. I would have liked to see the colors being used more, though.

7.

I would have never thought to use a leather texture like this before. I really like the lowered opacity on the header to0, it brings out the great textures in the leather. I don’t like the font they have for their page links, though.

6.

This header is phenomenal. It’s a graphic design blog, so seeing pain resembles graphics, which really ties into the site very well. The “o” in “blog” also looks like a paint palette.

5.

The textures here are like no other. I love a “clean” design (part of what made me design the WordPress theme, Clean). The textures here are grunge, yet clean. Rarely, do I see this technique used well.

4.

I love this header. Rarely do I see a site that has a dark color scheme that still appeals to me. I really like the glow on Abduzeedo’s logo. The rainbow is perfect for showing design.

3.

I love how Truly Ace shows that a blog header is the blog’s logo. Rarely, I see a true logo on a blog for design. It’s usually just a placeholder header. I understand I am going into so much detail about the trademark and the ace, but it really makes a difference.

2.

The case is the same with Josh Puckett’s website. The logo for a blog is an integral part to me, it looks great.

1.

The button to the left is great. The typography is great. I love how the words are explained, and I think it is very clean looking.

Original Mockup (tplack.com v1.0)

As you can see, the overall structure of the website really has not changed by a lot.

4 Month Release - v1.5

In the previous version of the Tyler Plack Blog that was running for about 4 months, there were several key elements missing. A few problems with what I’ve dubbed “The 4 Months Release” (only because it was running for 4 months). The problems with this release were:

-Comments were not properly displaying gravatar

-Rollover icons for social media did not work

-Search form is missing

-No meta tags, meta description, or SEO

-Missing a proper sidebar (this one was just a <?php include(“sidebar.php”); ?>, so it was extremely unscale-able)

-Several broken links

Because of all of these missing “ingredients”, I have released tplack.com version 2. If you have any other problems, contact me on that contact form that was missing for ages, or leave a comment below.

And for those of you who go to tplack.com and it looks nothing like those mockups, here is the current day version of tplack.com.

Current Day (tplack.com v2.0)

I hope I’ve interested you with some insight to the inner workings of my blog.

Illustrator is a great tool, but is very daunting to stare at the blank screen with all of your tools in front of you. Especially for those who are still learning.

So here are 3 tips to making your vector illustrations save you money and time.

1. All objects are composed of smaller shapes. Remember this and use it to your advantage.

2. The pen tool isn’t always the answer. When you need to make a shape that you don’t have with a general shape from Illustrator, try using the pathfinder

3.  Illustrator is better for vector based images than anything else; so use it for vector images. Photoshop is for manipulating photos.

Feel free to post any comments, questions, or concerns in the comment section below. For those of you who have read through the post, what do you like more? Illustrator or Photoshop?

<!– And yes, I know jQuery is a Javascript library, but I am just comparing using it to not using it. –>

So let’s compare Javascript and jQuery

-Javascript does not need to load an external binary

-Javascript does more than just “effects”

-Javascript has tons of tutorials to get you started

-jQuery can be learned in just hours

-jQuery is “bloated” for users on a slow connection (Especially if you’re using the development release)

It is hard for me to decide wether Javascript is the answer or jQuery .jQuery has been used by many designers, but I find Javascript a little bit easier as it is also more advanced.

What are your thoughts?